
Class _ Si SI 

Book._ 
Copyright N° 



■ Pis* 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



By Robert Gordon Anderson 



Not Taps but Reveille 

The Little Chap 

Leader of Men 



Leader of Men 



Leader of Men 



By 

Robert Gordon Anderson 

Author of 

i« Little Chap," etc. 

Theodore Roosevelt 

From a photograph 

Copyright by Paul Thompson 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New York and Lo< 

Ube louche- 



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Leader of Men 



By 

Robert Gordon Anderson 

Author of 
"Not Taps but Reveille," "The Little Chap," etc. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

$be ftnlcherbocfter press 

1920 



■At 



Copyright. 1920 

BY 

ROBERT GORDON ANDERSON 



MAY -6:1320 




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£ 



Co 

MY FATHER 



ROOSEVELT is dead." Why should 
that line 
Strike to my heart as if it told 
The death of some close kin of mine, 
Father or brother, friend of old? 

1 never saw him face to face — 
Just once some fourteen years ago 

Outside the crowded meeting place, 
When he addressed the overflow, 

The fearless eyes, the firm-set chin, 
A man who loved the nobler fight, 

The short swift gestures driving in 

The things he knew were just and right: 

A newer, deeper reverence 

For things that never can grow old, 
Judgments so filled with common sense 

Fools did not realize their gold. 
9 



io Leader of Men 

And things which statesmen scorn to preach- 
The love of children, home and wife, 

Old-fashioned laws, yet ones whose breach 
May sap the proudest nation's life. 

So with his passing now it seems 

The old, old order too is dead, 
The new with all its restless dreams, 

Revolt and chaos lowers ahead. 

Th' oncoming storm in rage assaults 
The rocks that bulwarked all our past. 

And yet that age with all its faults 

Held things to which we must hold fast. 

The outworn temples we thought good, 
False gods may well be overthrown — 

The broad foundations where he stood 
We still will cherish as our own. 

" Roosevelt is dead." Our leader gone! 

To-day there stands his vacant chair 
Not in that island home alone — 

By myriad firesides everywhere. 



Leader of Men 1 1 

He loved us! Swift our torches light 
With the bright fire his courage gives. 

We shall not falter in the fight — 
Roosevelt is dead. His spirit lives! 

R. G. A. 

Reprinted by courtesy of Scribncr's Magazine. 



Leader of Men 

IT is strange to link his memory with 
a dream. Dreams are inconse- 
quent, prankish things, and his 
life, which mattered more than any in 
our time, was clearly charted by Des- 
tiny. Dreams are of the dark and 
he ever walked in sunlight. They are 
woven of gossamer, he was hewn of 
stern, heroic stuff. 

Yet it was significant, a symbol, re- 
vealing in the fantasies of the night 
what he meant to us in the glare and 
heat of the noontide. To us, not the 
great, the wise men of the earth, but the 
plain, the unlettered, in flat and tene- 
ment and prairie shack, who followed 
13 



14 Leader of Men 

him from afar. To us who had only 
glimpsed him, on the distant platform, 
the vanishing train, or as the storm- 
center of some swirling crowd, and yet 
who felt, when those first bulletins 
came, as if our own households had 
been entered by the dark messenger. 
The dream came in this way: 
There were twelve of us around the 
table that night, men and women in 
the common walks of life, his humble 
followers. 

Outside in the busy world, the 
mighty were quarreling over our lead- 
er's mantle, passing judgment, or writ- 
ing requiems in their lordly way. 
There was no greatness, no splendor 
within the room, save that of our affec- 
tion for him. As so often happened 
with us, the hours passed in talk of him. 
Each in turn, and according to his type, 



Leader of Men 15 

dwelt on the ray of that shining per- 
sonality which most had lighted and 
warmed his own life. 

We spoke of tributes to other leaders 
and longed for one of ours, not a search- 
ing life or splendid history — some 
simple thing straight from the heart. 
Already in that first Christmastide 
after his passing they had started their 
books about him. They will range in 
stately procession down the years. We 
praised them as the verdicts of wiser 
minds. Then we faltered — and paused. 
Even in the loftiest, we said, there was 
something missing. What it was we 
could not define, some intangible es- 
sence of character, some afterglow of 
affection, perhaps the homely appeal of 
the film taken in the family circle, 
which no master-portrait can have. 

One says, — "That's fine and won- 



16 Leader of Men 

derful but you should have seen him 
when — ," or, "You remember that 
time—" 

And this though he had never crossed 
our thresholds, never clasped our hands 
in his! 

Perhaps we forgot, for the time, that 
nobly austere dirge of Kipling's, but 
still our question had reason in it when 
we came to ask: 

Is there none to voice the hearts of 
those who loved him best, who suffered 
most, — the ungifted, the mute? 

There was one among us, that night, 
somewhat above the average, — a writ- 
er of fair note. He, with the long- 
ing of his craft for expression of that 
within his heart, recalled "The Perfect 
Tribute," the touching portrait of the 
beloved chief of fifty years ago. That 
was ambitious. Even so we thought 



Leader of Men 17 

the mellow tones and dramatic values 
of fiction less fitting than rugged 
fact. 

He mulled over this form and that, 
that tale and the other. There were 
anecdotes suggesting the theme, events 
which lent the setting. All were re- 
jected by us, who had neither critic's 
plumb nor square, only the one meas- 
ure of our love. 

Then he spoke of that fine last act of 
The Copperhead, in which, though he 
never comes, Lincoln lives, reborn in an 
old man's memory. Oh, for an after- 
glow portrait like that! 

And all the while I studied those in 
the room. The light of their faces, the 
tones of their voices as they talked, in 
themselves were rare, unconscious trib- 
utes. And the faces of others I had 
known, who loved him, kept passing 



18 Leader of Men 

before me, — plain men and common, 
yet a shining host. 

And so I felt that never would his 
portrait be painted, his story writ, in 
master-painting and lofty book, half 
so clearly as in the composite pic- 
ture made by his humblest followers, 
each reflecting some facet of his mighty 
soul. 

The sum of their life-stories in a way 
was his. In them was his real perform- 
ance, his never-withering laurel. 

The hours passed, the guests de- 
parted, and I fell asleep. But in my 
dream the voices still carried on. . . . 

It had a setting in half-light, the 
vision, but as well-defined as that play 
of Tolstoi's which the art of the young- 
est Barrymore so lately illumined. 
There was a spacious room, with easy 
chairs and many books, trophies and 



Leader of Men 19 

noble stag-heads upon the wall. Full 
length doors opened on waters in the 
distance. Across them a bright moon- 
path led to the horizon. 

Just without the circle of the read- 
ing-lamp, the Leader himself reclined 
in an easy chair, a little inert for one of 
such vitality. He seemed to be very 
tired, almost pathetically so. 

In his hand he held a volume. 
Though it was small and I was far off, 
with a dreamer's vision I could read 
the title. It was one of Emerson's. 
Some sentence or rather paragraph — 
for, as his habit was, he read whole 
pages with swift leaps of his mind — 
caught his attention and he repeated it 
aloud: 

"Truth is a natural force and no 
more to be resisted than other natural 
forces." 



20 Leader of Men 

He paused, and for a moment the fig- 
ure was instinct with the old vitality. 

Boyishly he uttered that familiar ex- 
pression of his: 

"By George, that's fine!" 

It did not sound incongruous in the 
dream, nor was it without dignity. 

Then in distress he added: 

"But how long, oh Lord, how long!*' 

Suddenly there were voices, like 
those of the guests of the evening, 
soundingoutside, on the moonlit waters. 

Then a bright troupe entered through 
the doorway, with the raiment and fea- 
tures of the Virtues, as in some old 
Morality play. Ahead marched Cour- 
age with strong hands and lion-skin 
over his sinewy body, Honesty with 
forthright glance, Discipline with meas- 
ured tread. 

After them, carrying a compass, 



Leader of Men 21 

came Single-Mind, and one whom I 
mistook for Beauty because of the 
fairness of the features, but it was 
Truth. Near him was Duty to whom, 
though an unpretentious fellow, they 
all deferred. Then followed Tender- 
ness, Generosity, Sacrifice, and others, 
nobly virile or gentle, gracious figures. 
And over them constantly played a 
searchlight, like that of the sun, clear 
and revealing, yet with a mellowness 
and warmth that gladdened the heart. 
It was in the hands of one called Com- 
mon Sense. 

By his side so constantly he seemed a 
sort of shadow, a sunny shadow of Com- 
mon Sense, walked Humor. They were 
both likely, well-proportioned people. 
They had the air of frequent travel to- 
gether and with a third, the helpmeet 
of Humor. She never strayed far from 



22 Leader of Men 

him. If they were parted for a moment 
by the press, she always slipped back 
to his side. She was a woman of gentle 
ways, and though her face was covered 
with a veil, it shone with a subdued 
radiance. Her name was Tears. 

And ever threading in and out of the 
busy throng, like a beautiful melody, 
was a bright spirit in rainbow raiment, 
whom they called Romance. 

After them, over the threshold, 
passed another, a plainer group, my 
friends of the evening and the others 
whose faces I had recalled, — the old 
stage-driver on the Montana trail who 
had talked to me roughly yet affection- 
ately of him, giving his name that odd 
dialect twist one often hears in our 
North-West ; the shoe salesman who had 
on his bedroom walls five portraits of 
his chief and who lost so many accounts 



Leader of Men 23 

in defense of him; the little Italian 
cobbler whose hammer and awl had 
seen his own four boys through high 
school, and who thought him even Gari- 
baldi's peer; a pathetic clergyman pen- 
sioner; and women, toilworn but of 
unbroken spirit. 

Three figures lingered on the thresh- 
old, — a bent old man, a bowed old 
woman, a crippled youth. I remem- 
bered their faces well. The old man 
was he who so often pored over that 
letter with his signature, the youth the 
one who had written from France, — 
"Why don't they let him come? He's 
worth fifty divisions !" — the woman, she 
who had given her all for them. 

Tattered khaki clothed the younger 
man. The old folks were poorly dressed. 
They were quite a contrast to that 
bright company. 



24 Leader of Men 

Nervously the old man turned his 
hat in his hands as the woman twisted 
her coat in hers. But the young man 
did not seem afraid. He urged them 
forward. 

"Come on, father, it's all right," he 
said. 

Disturbed from his reverie, the host 
arose and greeted the more distin- 
guished guests as if they were friends 
who long had had the freedom of 
that household. But when Tenderness 
slipped in her quiet way to his side and 
whispered to him, he saw the three still 
lingering by the door. 

The throng parted to let him through. 
He hurried to the threshold and clasped 
the boy in his arms, then the woman, 
and the old man. He welcomed them 
as if they of all his guests were the most 
honored. And the chivalrous visitors 



Leader of Men 25 

waited on them, until the shyness of 
the three vanished and their faces 

shone. 

After that there was talk of a journey 
among the distinguished folk. They 
noticed that their host was weary. He 
needed rest, they said. 

He did seem worn. The short-sighted 
but ever eagle vision was failing. Some- 
how he looked as those noble antlered 
heads upon the wall must have looked 
after the long battle, and just before 

they fell. 

He asked the company to stay with 
him for the night, adding that he would 
be ready in the morning. 

Then for the first time they were 
aware of a new presence in the room, 
one who had passed over the threshold 
after all the others. It was a vague 
figure, strange yet familiar, with noise- 



26 Leader of Men 

less step and mien not at all foreboding 
but reposeful. 

"We must start to-night," the pres- 
ence said. "There is no need of 
pack or passage-fare, where we are 
going." 

There was utter finality in the 
stranger's tones. When he had finished 
no one spoke. None, mortal or im- 
mortal there, could gainsay that com- 
mand. 

So through the doorway they passed, 
in twos and threes, the last visitor lead- 
ing the way, with Courage not far be- 
hind. The great man waved the rest 
ahead, then followed himself, his arms 
around the old man and the crippled 
youth, the woman walking at their side. 

On the shore he left them. They 
waved to him as those who say farewell 
but for a little while. Then in the van 



Leader of Men 27 

of the shining figures on over the moon- 
path he went. 

It led to some far off place where 
there were new peaks to climb, new 
trails to follow. Their outlines I could 
not distinguish. They were steep yet 
very fair. 

Then the door closed upon the moon- 
path and it was dark for me. An un- 
seen hand tore off the last leaf from the 
calendar on the wall. 

The uncovered figures read: 

January 6th 

So fled the dream and I awoke. But 
still through the daylight hours the 
figures of that noble company passed 
before me in bright review, and at the 
end, the shabby three, the humblest of 
his followers, yet most honored of all. 



28 Leader of Men 

And it came to me that the vision had 
little of a dream's illogic and held much 
of truth. Some mysterious painter 
in that dim borderland had finished 
the portrait that we around the table 
had so unconsciously begun. For all 
its broad colors and simple allegory it 
was like life, as we his followers knew 
him, with the sturdy composition of 
fact and Rembrandt glimpses of the 
soul. 

It was mellowed by sentiment, for we, 
the plain householders, the private 
citizens of the Earth, are sentimental. 
So are all great majorities. And nor- 
mal sentiment is not so vain a thing. 
It is clear oxygen, which, uniting with 
our souls, kindles the warming fire, 
sometimes the flame of emotion that 
sweeps the world. It has started great 
crusades. It has made history. 



Leader of Men 29 

And he was supreme, not for deeds 
which History will record, but for the 
reactions to his soul of millions now 
alive and millions yet to walk the land 
he loved. These reactions were those 
of emotion, of sentiment, though as 
singularly direct as the glance of his 
eyes before they were dimmed, a year 
ago. It was through sentiment that 
he was great. It was through us that 
he was great. 

Again the friends gathered around 
the table. We talked of the dream and 
what it meant. And the writer, with a 
poetry the rest of us could never 
achieve, exclaimed: 

"What manner of man was this? 
What rare strange personality that 
could so diffuse itself throughout a 
land, over a world?" 

The answer we could never reach, 



30 Leader of Men 

but in our search we learned the truth 
the vision held, summed up together 
the things he meant to us. 

There were many: 

Perhaps in the beginning he captured 
us by the romance coloring his life as 
much as by his courage and honesty. 
Romance at first in its accepted sense — 
then in its higher. 

Children of men are ever held by 
stories, by living ones most strongly of 
all. As the years passed we watched 
his swiftly and splendidly unfold. Long 
ago, while he was still commissioner in 
New York, we picked him for the hero 
of a stirring drama to be played on 
some vast stage. And soon through 
the press and many books, we grew 
familiar with the earlier years. 

We were glad that he was an aristo- 
crat, he the true democrat, that he 



Leader of Men 3i 

overcame the handicap of wealth. He 
was a human link between orders. 
Paradoxically he bridged the gulf be- 
tween caste and caste more quickly 
than if he had come from the plough 
or loom. 

We were glad of his weak boyhood, 
wrought into power by fixed purpose, 
of his young manhood at college and 
on the plains. 

And though our feet could never 
climb that trail, our eyes followed him 
from peak to peak. We rendered him 
homage, admired him, fondly, as the 
puny brother the stronger on the ath- 
letic field. Often we chuckled with de- 
light. "We told you so," we would 
say, "we knew he could do it." 

Yet his was not the ideal figure for 
romance. Stoutish and stocky was 
his frame, his neck and shoulders like 



3 2 Leader of Men 

a pugilist's. Sometimes when he 
grew intense his voice was rasping, 
shrilling into a falsetto. His eyes were 
short of sight, even in youth, and later 
one was blind. 

But that frame had the poise and 
alertness of a thoroughbred race, a 
mighty thunder that voice, those eyes 
the eagle's vision. In life they were 
weapons of the spirit, piercing as 
swiftly to the false heart as his mind 
to a problem's core. 

And as we gaze on his pictures, above 
our desks, upon our walls, even in 
death we know those eyes still seek new 
trails towards far-off shining goals. 

As we look again, we see that that 
head had a sturdy human cast, unlike 
those of the elder statesmen, which 
often resemble the stone faces of the 
mountain, austere and aloof. 



Leader of Men 33 

The fingers are short and stubby. 
Upon the chair his hand rests, tightly 
closed even in repose. 

His gestures were simple. They 
were short and swift and typical of his 
time. As his mind in action, they fol- 
lowed the straight line. To Euclid 
they would have seemed beautiful. 

The force behind them, too, was like 
his age. A powerful motor drove them. 
But back of that superb machine were 
immortal fires, which never were 
banked, never burned low. 

His deeds, unstudied as they were, 
had all that grace, that color of rom- 
ance his person lacked. Already they 
are household words, and, like ancient 
sagas, will be told wherever men read 
books, casting the still more potent 
spell of truth. While he lived it was 
hard even for poets to hymn his achieve- 



34 Leader of Men 

ments. They were arrow flights, right- 
ly aimed and timed, too swift for song 
to follow. 

So we were held captive by the rom- 
ance of his life, that in the accepted 
sense, but more strongly by the higher, 
the romance of the spirit. And this 
means neither perilous journey of the 
body nor far adventure of the soul but 
cleaving to duty. Duty touched with 
splendor! The earthworm given wings 
of achievement! 

We gloried in his strength the more 
because he held his body but as an in- 
strument, welded by discipline to trip- 
hammer force and sharpened to keenest 
edge. We are not, as the "idealists" 
would have it, lean spirits toying with 
mists in some mysterious realm. We 
still have mortal frames, still toil in a 
human world. The truth that is good 



Leader of Men 35 

for the soul to conceive, the lips to 
utter, is worth the body's struggle. 

No other had so many points of con- 
tact with life, yet he was never the 
dilettante, always proficient — never 
feverish, always well-ordered. None 
pitted mind against so many and di- 
verse and held respect. None rubbed 
elbows with such crowds and kept their 
love. 

It was sometimes hard to see how one 
could be so varied, so intense and not 
grow feverish. His seeming impulsive- 
ness bewildered us at first — the vet- 
eran guide has killed his game while 
the untrained still fumble with their 
magazines. 

Yet he himself has said he was only a 
normal man, making the utmost of his 
powers. Though this be the under- 
valuing of talent, it is in a measure true. 



36 Leader of Men 

And in this he was the great exemplar 
for those who, envying the winged feet 
of genius, murmur at the steepness of 
the climb. 

In every memory, every estimate, it 
was his courage and honesty that 
counted most. His supreme posses- 
sion of these two things is now allowed 
by even his enemies. Discussion of 
them is trite, trite as talk of the Ele- 
ments, which he himself resembled. 
But we leaned on him heavily because 
of these. In an age that praised the 
trophy, not the fairness of the race, 
sheer honesty in one who led meant 
much. 

But all the sterling virtues that 
marked him would have blundered 
without common sense, the plainest, 
the most divine of gifts. 

With this he attacked big problems 



Leader of Men 37 

as simply as the small, with a little 
more of concern, of will, but with the 
same sureness, the same forthrightness. 
Read his letter of June the eleventh, 
nineteen hundred and five, written to 
one of his sons at school. The settling 
of a great war and the fortunes of mil- 
lions becomes as simple, told to a boy, 
as a quarrel over a farmer's fence. 

And these last sad years when so 
much of the world was misruled by 
charlatan and demagogue— a sight for 
the wrath, the laughter, the pity of 
God Himself— it was this same gift to 
His chosen leader, which alone could 
have brought order from chaos, and 
which, though for a time he was re- 
jected of men, did much to save the 
world. 

This more than any of the older 
epochs is the age of the common man. 



38 Leader of Men 

The average of intelligence, of power 
has risen. The gulf between leader 
and people has shrunk. The valor of 
the plain soldier, the might of the pri- 
vate conscience told in this last war as 
never before. But we will always 
have need of captains. He gathered 
those of right mind but wandering 
leaderless. He was the man on horse- 
back at the crossing of three roads. A 
nation walked in indifference up the 
middle. He swung them to the right 
and to the charge. 

How his heart burned to go with 
them, on into the battle! He was re- 
jected again. Yet long after their 
generals with all their stars are dust he 
will lead a mightier army than that 
denied to him then. 

Again we are thankful that he held 
the light so long without revealing one 



Leader of Men 39 

fatal flaw. Long and far they camped 
on his trail, only to come home without 
the quarry; searched this record and 
that, to find no blot. It is a source of 
mirth for which we should be grateful 
in a tragic world. 

Mistakes there were, for he was hu- 
man, failings of temperament, for every 
virtue casts its fault-shadow. 

But the egoism with which he was 
charged was often but the steel-harden- 
ing of purpose — the temper, the bright 
fire of courage flaming high. 

Often misread were his appeals to the 
crowds. They were not theatric. He 
had the leader's technique, of course. 
Some of his ''gestures" were designed, 
not by a wily histrionism but by com- 
mon sense and a decent understanding 
of men. More were as unconscious as 
the motions of the stag, the lion, of all 



40 Leader of Men 

creatures close to universal springs. 
He loved crowds, their finer passions. 
He knew their need for great crusades. 

They called him by a familiar name. 
It is often a politician's hail-fellow trick 
to make some puppet popular. For 
him it was the accolade of youth. 

He could laugh at himself. That 
chuckle was never the symptom of 
pride. His humor was proof of his 
sanity, his instant sizing of the situa- 
tion, his unerring sense of proportion. 
It tingled with the zest of life, though it 
had not the mellowness of one close to 
the soil, like Lincoln. Nor was it so 
much a refuge from care. His flashes 
were passing sparks struck out as he 
rode. I n his comments or retorts, often 
as smashing as his blows, we always felt 
the grim satisfaction of a fighter's 
partisans at the ringside. They were 



Leader of Men 4 1 

often literal executions, like his com- 
parison of an editor libeling the valor, 
not of himself but of his sons, to the 
lowest of crawling things upon a marble 
floor. There were two choices he said, 
crushing the insect or sparing it and — 
the floor. 

Those equipped to advise he heeded. 
His councilors tell of their constant 
welcome. But the sights once fixed, he 
tried no new aim. The too-listening 
ear palsies the fighting arm. 

Never, as the near great, did he fear 
surrounding himself with rivaling 
minds. He loved their stimulus — and 
his country needed them. No Achilles, 
sulking in his tent was he. He could 
lose himself in a cause. 

In his admirations he was generous, 
not only of the famous in the fields of 
his recreations, but of those who might 



42 Leader of Men 

be thought competitors. He often said 
that a successor at Albany made a 
better Governor than himself. 

Surely in that volume of letters to his 
children, which should endure longer 
than all his formal works, there shine 
the touching humility, the childlike 
nature, which mark true greatness. 

When new to the political game he 
sometimes trusted too much, when 
older and wiser, he used those of false 
standards for a purpose, and gave them 
respect for some rich vein threading 
their dark natures with gold. No army 
ever marshaled burns with pure patri- 
otic fire. Many are conscripts, many 
soldiers of fortune. It is sufficient for 
the battle ahead that they are in the 
ranks, marching forward. 

Not all of his critics bore malice. 
Some were well-meaning. At such a 



Leader of Men 43 

time he hurt some prejudice — we have 
yet to find a definite grievance. They 
still view him through the smoke of 
forgotten campaigns. 

And how the ranks of his detractors 
have dwindled ! Too great a shrinkage 
to be laid to common chivalry for the 
dead. Perspective has come very 
swiftly after his passing. Even ac- 
cepting, without defense, all the evi- 
dence they bring, it is so pitifully small. 

Specks on the Sun! 

Though he was typical of his time 
they called him old-fashioned. They 
laughed at his truisms. Gold, too, is 
old-fashioned — and salt and sunlight 
and the rocks of the eternal hills. 

On old ideals, old truths he based his 
life, while choosing new for superstruc- 
ture. He honored and observed the 
normal rules. He did not scorn the 



44 Leader of Men 

Church. Creeds wear out. Hypocrites 
enter her walls. There is still conse- 
cration there. Nor scorned he the 
oldest of books. It is a quarry of 
eternal truth for the new temples of 
to-day. 

Or in another way he knew that 
some at least of our beliefs, some con- 
ventions of our social order, are but 
smooth bearings on which the wheels of 
Progress move the more swiftly to the 
goal. 

So it was good to have in some shin- 
ing life the reaffirmation of our faith. 

And it is a thing for profound grati- 
tude that we are not forced to plead, 
as for other leaders, the sum of benefits 
conferred upon the race against grave 
moral offenses. 

It is vain to say that art and state- 
craft have no concern with morals. 



Leader of Men 45 

Under the spell of exotic beauty, the 
glamor of some high deed, it is often 
argued so. But there is a sense of loss, 
of final futility, when the great fail us 
in fundamental things, for which no 
lovely creation, no new empire can 
atone. 

Had he left us no other legacy, we 
would still be rich in the memory of his 
home. The chivalry, the unceasing 
love with which he enfolded his own, is 
a beacon to light a world chafing at 
divine laws. 

There was no parade about this. 
His home was a holy place. In it he 
found peace. When he was free from 
the cares of state, his wife was his com- 
panion, around the hearth and when 
he walked the ways of Nature whom he 
loved most, after his fellowmen. He 
was boyishly proud of her. To the 



4 6 Leader of Men 

last, young love never died out of 
his heart. 

He was the chum, the confidant of 
his children. He romped in their child- 
ish plays, he shared their little griefs. 
When he advised them as young men 
and women, he, the great Leader, 
offered his counsel humbly, suggesting 
the course which seemed best to him, 
but leaving the choice to them. And 
he always expressed his pride in each, 
his fullest confidence that whatever the 
choice it would always square with right. 

He realized that we are never free 
until in bonds. He valued the beauti- 
ful interdependence of human souls in 
the old relationships, which make life 
livable and fair. Against the lax at- 
titude and the more active forces which 
threaten these divine balances of our 
faulty scheme he preached and fought. 



Leader of Men 47 

He was Cosmos expressed in a human 
personality as so many clamoring to- 
day are Chaos. 

And though he enfolded his own with 
love, he did not hold them from the 
common strife. " Spend and be spent " 
was his motto and he would not spare 
his own. As one of us, a splendid 
woman of his own heroic mold said, 
"If we love our own truly we want the 
best for them." 

And oh, the human tenderness of 
him! The old servant can tell of that, 
who found him in the stable, his arms 
around the old pet pony. They said 
he was hard the day before, when, 
after the cable came, he went up-state 
to face the Convention. They never 
knew his heart, never saw his tears. 
Only that old servitor and the ancient 
pony knew, as he wept for his boy. 



48 Leader of Men 

His youngest born, who, on the fields 
of France, in death gave immortal life 
to the father's ideal! 

To change an old adage in letter 
though not in spirit, " By their follow- 
ers shall ye know them." 

Through forty years he has held his. 
The personnel has a high average. It is 
of sound stock and, in the sterling sense 
of that term, American or American in 
the making. They are not all young. 
The middle-aged, the very old followed 
his trail. Women looked upon him as 
their champion and children loved him. 

Some false prophets have held their 
peoples faithful over many years. But 
they promised enjoyment, preferment, 
ease. Our leader led over a hard road. 

There was not the frenzy of the old 
crusades in this. Intensely sane and 
practical were the tasks he set, but 



Leader of Men 49 

made beautiful by singleness of purpose 
and harmony with divine laws. 

This has ever been an uneasy world. 
To-day the high tide of restlessness 
threatens as never before to engulf us. 
Some say that, had he been spared, he 
would have built new bulwarks against 
that tide. That is conjecture. Some- 
times the old leader in his generation 
spends his endeavor. Perhaps after 
sixty years of warfare with the old he has 
not the strategy for the new. Perhaps 
he had served his purpose. 

But of one thing we are sure, that if 
he were here to-day in the strength of 
his prime, he would acquire that strate- 
gy, would wage this later battle to a 
victorious close. His spirit had that 
mettle which alone can make weapons 
and implements for any age. It 
was mettle divine. So we can face 



50 Leader of Men 

the stoim, strong and serene in his 
memory and in the memory of the 
Leader he himself followed. 

Already the romance of his life is fast 
turning into a legend, more swiftly 
after his passing than with any of the 
old heroes of story or song. It is a 
nobler legend than any tale of physical 
prowess or courage alone, for it is a 
vital far-reaching influence like the 
might of the sunlight. Every day, 
everywhere is asked the question by 
earnest souls seeking for the truth: 

"What would he have done?" 

It is a moral hypothesis more often 
propounded about this leader than any 
other, save Lincoln and the Founder 
of Christianity Himself. 

He was moral force incarnate, now 
that influence is immortal. 

It is not the heights to which he has 



Leader of Men 51 

gone that lend enchantment. The 
mountain was as much a source of 
strength, when on its sides we saw the 
riven trees and scarring gulches, as when 
now we lift our eyes to it, soft in the 
purple distance. 

And History will not discount our 
estimate so much. When the tale is 
told, here, in his following, you will find 
his true measure. 

For the aggregate vision of crowds — 
not the mobs of a moment but the 
crowds of a generation — does not err. 
It is terrible and keen. Littleness 
masking as greatness cannot survive its 
fierce light. In its flame the slighter 
faults, which to his critics are the whole 
habit of this man, shrivel, and before 
our eyes he emerges in his true majesty 
of soul. 

This is the leader we, the average 



52 Leader of Men 

men, the plain and the unlettered, 
knew. In life we loved him, followed 
him, fought through him. It seemed 
to us at times, almost as if each red 
corpuscle in that mighty organism, in 
action represented and strove for some 
one of his followers. 

It is strange the way Life has! It 
was just a tiny clot, which in the des- 
tined second stilled that lion-heart, 
that great dynamo which energized 
and lighted a world. . . . 

Three days after his death I saw the 
three — that bent old man, that bowed 
old woman, the crippled youth. They 
sat by the window of their little flat. 
It was an unlovely place of grimy fac- 
tories and noisy streets. The clock 
struck two and they went out upon the 
porch, under a little flag that fluttered 
at half-mast. 



Leader of Men 53 

Then in that moment when the life 
of the great city paused for a few heart- 
beats, as the great man was borne to 
his last resting-place, I saw them rise. 
The young man dropped his crutch and 
stood as soldiers stand when the gun- 
carriage with their comrade, their loved 
captain, slowly passes. The old man 
straightened, baring his gray head to 
the wind. Between them stood the 
woman, who too had kept the faith. 
So they faced the flag — and the West. 

It was a moment forever memorable, 
for then I saw writ on those three plain 
faces the love a nation bore him. 

Still we do not mourn so much. We 
are glad that for sixty years we had 
him. His work was done. Someone, 
we do not yet know who, will put on his 
armor, take up his sword. 

A figure ancient as Time — and 



54 Leader of Men 

Truth! For struggle, with restful 
pauses of peace, is and for infinite ages 
will be the way of the universe. Our 
earthly wars are but the translation of 
that changeless law into terms of the 
flesh. They are sometimes necessary, 
often needless, and always cruel. 
Heaven speed that era when they shall 
cease! But the wars of the spirit will 
go on, the armies of light arrayed 
against the powers of darkness, until 
that last battle, whose field and hour 
no man may know. 

Theodore Roosevelt was a brave 
warrior of the body, he was the might- 
ier warrior of the soul. 

His life was a chord of many notes, 
blending in noble harmony, like the 
brass, the strings, the wind in Bee- 
thoven symphonies — militant, conquer- 
ing, glorious! Its music is not mute. 



Leader of Men 55 

It still echoes round the world, sound- 
ing the forward march for the souls of 
men to that nobler warfare — to victory 
— to peace. 



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